Sigh.

It’s 11:07 now. 11:08. PM that is. I can’t sleep. I can’t even close my eyes. The Internet is down here at home. Everyone else is in bed asleep. I can’t sleep.

A weekend from… the black lagoon. Or something. It started out promising. Our church, Church for the Harvest hosted a beautiful couples shower for Levi and I. We had delicious cheesecake with meat, cheese, and crackers. It was fun having the men there too. Some of the church families went in together to put together enough money for Levi and I to buy our first tent! We were (and are) so blessed by the shower and our friends. After we went out to Perkins with the usual crowd. We had a great time chatting. Then we were headed back to Levi’s house to order the tent we picked out MONTHS ago from REI.

We were on highway 27 and there were shiny eyes ahead of us about 100 yards maybe. Deer? No, there were too many… A whole family of raccoons? Maybe… We realized they weren’t that far in front of us, they were actually quite close, we slammed on the breaks as we saw a heard of about 10 cows standing in the middle of the road. We didn’t even see them! But how could we, it was pitch black and they were black.

What? Cows? This is dangerous; we should call the police before there is an accident. I called my mom to get the police phone number because it wasn’t a 911 emergency. I was about to hang up and Levi was going to try to shoo them off the road as we saw lights come around the corner in front of us. Levi slid back into his seat and said oh no. I told him to flash his brights at the on coming car. I told my mom the other car was slowing down, it looked like it was. Mom, no, they’re not slowing down! My blood went cold and I began to scream.

It was like nothing I have ever experienced. The raw panic of knowing the car wasn’t slowing down and the cows weren’t moving. I can still hear the sound of the cows being hit, being bowled over, being smashed here as I lay in my bed. A cow rolled over the top of the smashed Impala. I couldn’t stop screaming. The cows scattered everywhere. The car didn’t start to slow down till after it hit the cows. It slit to a stop. Levi was gone. I couldn’t get out of the car, I was paralyzed with fear. I called 911, hello yes (sobs) where am I? highway 27 (more sobbing) they hit the cows, the cows, they have broken legs, they have to be put down (and more sobbing). I didn’t know that Levi had already called it in. I looked out the window and there stood a cow, by now the police were arriving, the cow stood in the middle of the road with a broken leg, panting so hard it’s tongue has hanging out, shaking. My heart was so broken in so many ways. The pain of knowing that cow’s don’t heal from broken legs, they’re killed if they have broken legs. The pain of knowing that this farmer is going to be awoke to a nightmare. His living, his pets, his passions were smashed along highway 27 in the dead of the night. That farmer had the responsibility to the cattle to make sure they were locked up at night, but he didn’t want this to happen. There is no one you could blame, there was nothing that could have been done at this point, it had happened.

The people were okay, shook up, but okay. An ambulance came to remove glass from the two people, a man and a woman in their mid-twenties. The woman had been driving and was shook up, the man had been asleep. But they were going to be okay. We were all going to be okay.

Levi was so level headed. He did what needed to be done and he did it bravely and well. The people could have been dead. The cow could have pinned them in their car. It easily could have been us. Praise God that everyone is going to be okay.

Words cannot even begin to describe the panic and terror I felt during the accident.

I made it to bed by 2am. The following day was Saturday. We had a funeral to attend. Cancer had taken the life of a vibrant young man in our church. A son, a husband, a father of 2 young boys. Boys that might not even have a memory of their father. Everything was dying, everything was dead. I have cried this weekend like I have never cried before.

Today was good. Church was good. It was a day of rest. But now I can’t sleep. I feel agitated and restless. I can’t fall asleep. I don’t want to watch a movie, I don’t have a book with me to read, and Internet is down. I guess I’ll lay here.

God IS good and I have a lot to be thankful for. But what a weekend…